PM 'sent head up message' to Brooks

David Cameron texted Rebekah Brooks telling her to "keep her head up" in the week that she resigned as chief executive of News International, it has been alleged.

PUBLISHED: 10:02, Wed, May 9, 2012

New claims concerning the contact between Rebekah Brooks and the PM have emerged in a book [PA]

The Prime Minister told Mrs Brooks she would get through her difficulties just days before she stood down over the phone hacking scandal, an updated biography of Mr Cameron discloses.

The contact between the pair then came to an abrupt halt, the book, Cameron: Practically A Conservative, claims.

The biography, serialised in The Times, also details how the pair would often pop round to one another's houses in south Oxfordshire.

"The wider public might have liked to know too of the text message that Charlie Brooks told friends Cameron sent to Brooks at the beginning of the week in which she resigned, telling her to keep her head up and she'd get through her difficulties," authors Francis Elliott, of The Times, and James Hannin, of the Independent on Sunday, say.

"Such contact came to an abrupt halt soon afterwards, with Brooks not wanting to embarrass Cameron and he wanting to be able to say, hand on heart, that they had not been in touch. But it was claimed that Cameron did send an emissary to Brooks to mitigate his sudden coldness towards her. The gist of the message was 'Sorry I couldn't have been more loyal to you as you have been to me, but Ed Miliband had me on the run'."

The revelations come just days before Mrs Brooks and former Number 10 communications director Andy Coulson are expected to make embarrassing revelations about British politicians' attempts to woo Rupert Murdoch's newspapers.

There is speculation that the Leveson Inquiry could release emails and text messages sent between Mr Cameron and Mrs Brooks. Mrs Brooks has kept all the texts she received from the Prime Minister, of which there could have been more than 12 a day, according to Daily Telegraph columnist Peter Oborne.

Mr Coulson will appear before the inquiry on Thursday, followed by Mrs Brooks on Friday, and their potentially explosive evidence could overshadow Mr Cameron's efforts to relaunch the coalition's programme after bruising local election results for the Conservatives and Lib Dems.

Mrs Brooks is likely to disclose further details about her close relationship with the Prime Minister, while Mr Coulson will speak about how he came to be appointed the Tories' top spin doctor.